Pseudo photography involves masking the viewfinder of a camera so that the user of the camera sees the particular picture which he wants printed, whether it be full frame (normal), telephoto or panoramic in nature, the latter being of course a type of pseudo wide angle photography, By suitably identifying on the film with respect to each exposure frame the particular viewfinder mask used in the exposure (encoding), the printer can determine how to mask the print or how to mask the negative when printing from the negative.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,973,997 discloses a camera that makes use of ambient light directed through light pipes to expose spots on the film to indicate normal, telephoto or panoramic print formats. Such use of ambient light can result in unreliability or underexposure under certain conditions. The present invention is directed to overcoming any limitations caused by the use of ambient light and to providing a reliable and low-cost camera construction for indicating a variety of film formats.